Month: September 2026

  • Qu’avez-vous comme…?

    Qu’avez-vous comme vin rouge? is a everyday French question meaning “What red wine do you have?” It belongs to a wider pattern, qu’avez-vous comme…? or qu’est-ce que vous avez comme…?, both meaning “what do you have in the way of…?” or, more naturally, “what do you have for…?” or simply “what…do you have?” This pattern…

  • chez

    Chez comes from the Latin word for house, casa, so chez moi translates literally as something like “at the house of me”. In practice, it simply means “at my place”. The same word extends well beyond housing, though, and can point to a person’s country, their body, their character, their profession, their culture or even…

  • pouvoir overuse

    If your French sounds correct but somehow “translated,” pouvoir is often part of the problem. English speakers reach for “can” constantly — for ability, permission, possibility, requests, and hedging all at once. French spreads these jobs across several different tools, so leaning on pouvoir the way you lean on “can” makes your French grammatically fine…